DREAM Act Makes Debut In Senate

Top White House officials were accompanied by an impressive crowd of potential DREAM Act candidates and supporters of the law at a Tuesday Senate hearing where they made their case for passing the fermenting immigration bill.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified in favor of the DREAM Act at the upper chamber’s first hearing on the decade-old bill. The law would effectively provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children if they attend college or join the military for two years. Candidates would be subject to background checks and any criminal record would cripple their chances of becoming citizens.

“These people do not pose a risk to public safety, they do not pose a risk to national security,” Napolitano said of those who would qualify to become citizens under the law. “Not only is this the right thing, it’s the smart thing.”

Republican Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) agreed that America was “a welcoming nation,” but argued that this notion was reserved for “immigrants who play by the rules and do it the right way.”

Cornyn was critical of the Obama administration for failing to lead the country on immigration reform, arguing that passing the DREAM Act does not work towards fixing the nation’s immigration system. Additionally, the Texas GOP’er said he was disappointed in the way the immigration law was being employed as a “political weapon” and said the 2012 election cycle is having its effects on the inner workings of Congress.

Duncan countered and called passing the DREAM Act “an issue of fairness” and said it would be a smart economic investment. Duncan cited figures released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that indicate passing the bill would increase federal revenue by $1.4 billion.

“We simply can’t afford to leave those kinds of resources on the table,” Duncan told Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) “Nothing we can do together would be more important for this nation’s young people.”

Many of these young people made their presence known in numbers at Durbin’s hearing. The hearing room in Hart Senate Office Building was packed with high school and college graduates draped in the colors of their alma mater, all of whom would be directly affected by the DREAM Act.  Perhaps most notably was Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist who told his story in the New York Times Magazine, offering his first-hand account of growing up in the United States as an undocumented immigrant.

The DREAM Act was passed in the House last December but stopped just shy of overcoming a Republican filibusterin the Senate during 2010’s lame-duck session. The law was reintroduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last month.